Fantasy Football Daily - Navigating the WR Dead Zone of Fantasy Football Drafts | Two-Point Stance Podcast

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

We've heard of the "RB Dead Zone" but is there now such a thing as the "WR Dead Zone"? Joe Dolan and Brian Drake sure think so. Take a listen as FantasyPoints.com staffers debate which receivers they are skipping over in fantasy football drafts. Maybe these guys are big names but does their production warrant the draft capital? Where does the dead zone begin and end? How can you avoid it? All that and more on a new Two-Point Stance Podcast. FantasyPoints.com is your home for the best in fantasy football news, data, DFS, and betting analysis. Make sure to subscribe to the FantasyPoints.com YouTube page and never miss our exclusive content: https://www.youtube.com/fantasypoints This show is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy and the BIGGEST Fantasy Football tournament of ALL TIME, Best Ball Mania Four. Take a shot at a first-place prize of 3 MILLION dollars! Signing up is so easy.  Simply head to UnderdogFantasy.com or download the app and use promo code FANTASYPTS. By using code FANTASYPTS we’ll match your first-time deposit, up to 100 dollars. That’s Underdog Fantasy, promo code FANTASYPTS. And as an added bonus... GET A FANTASY POINTS SUBSCRIPTION FOR $5! THAT'S A $60 VALUE FOR $5 all by using code FantasyPTS.   Must be 18+ up  (or 19+ in Alabama and Nebraska, 21+ in Massachusetts and Arizona) and present in a state where Underdog Fantasy operates. Terms apply. Concerned with your play? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit www.ncpgambling.org; In Arizona call 1-800-NEXT-STEP; in New York, Call 1-877-8-HOPENY; in Tennessee, call 1-800-889-9789.   We are live and drafting over at the FFPC.  All tournaments are launched and drafting for 2023 (only exception is Main Event, slow drafts kickoff July 4th).   The FFPC now has (2) tournaments with $1,000,000 grand prizes: FFPC Main Event and FantasyPros Championship.   If dynasty is more your thing, we’ve got Dynasty Startups that are filling daily, starting at $100 per entry, and go all the way up to $5000 for the ballers out there in fantasy land.   The FFPC Best Ball Tournament ($125/entry) and Superflex Best Ball Tournament ($35/entry) is off and running.   Go to myffpc.com for more. #FantasyFootball #NFL --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time to the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoint.com. Top-level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room, with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. Across the fantasy universe, welcome everybody into the two-point stance, powered by FantasyPoint.com. I'm your host, Brian Drake. Check me out on the old Twitter machine at Drake Fantasy. hanging as they do every week. I'm a main man Joe Dolan.

He's on Twitter, FG underscore Dolan. Joe, what a fun, fun topic we've got today. We're not going to talk dead zone running backs. We're actually going to talk dead zone wide receivers. It's something Joe, I've never heard anybody talk about. So we could be breaking ground here. Everyone pull over in your cars. Send the link of this to your friends.

It's going to be phenomenal. How you doing, Bill? I'm doing great, Drake. And I think what the dead zone of wide receivers, comes from is just kind of a little bit of a trend or an emerging kind of an emerging strategy on underdog that this has kind of become inevitable. On underdog drafts, which is where we're doing the strong majority, I would say, of our drafts so far, these draft rooms, Drake, are so wide receiver drunk.

it's insane. And it really becomes like, if you're not getting out of the first two rounds with at least one wide receiver, you're going to be playing from behind at that position. And what it's kind of done is it's taken what we called the running back dead zone last year and kind of flipped it on its head.

In doing early best ball manias and puppies and now poodles on underdog, I'm realizing, man, as soon as you get to like the third round, the wide receivers become just so unappealing. And that's when I want to be drafting running backs because the running backs are so appealing at that spot. We'll talk running backs on another show. But I want to focus on this wide receiver dead zone.

Can we find any gems here? Can we mine for some rare metals? in this spot if we're not loading up on wide receivers early, or are we just kind of going to have to go with the flow and just draft the shit out of wide receivers early and then load up on these running backs? It's a really, really interesting conundrum this year. And remember, it's only half point PPR on underdog.

People draft like it's full point. It's not. It's half. So in essence, you kind of want guys that are going to score some touchdowns, too. I think people lose sight of that is really touch. touchdowns win in half point and standard leagues, if anybody still plays in a standard league. But let's start looking through here. I'm going to just call out a few names.

So when you get to the end of round number three, you start to see the returning Calvin Ridley, Amari Cooper, who had a really nice bounce back year, his first year in Cleveland, and then Christian Watson comes in around 40. What are your thoughts on those three guys? Are you still okay with taking them? probably is your wide receiver, maybe two, could be three if you start three straight wide receivers, or are you starting, when you see those names, are you starting to veer a little bit? I'm okay with those names. Ridley is a discussion that I want to have a little bit later.

So I actually want to back up on this here a little bit, Drake, because we'll talk about those guys. I want to discuss where does this dead zone start? Yeah, that's what I mean. So when I look at those three guys, I think I'm still cool with them. So I don't think that's dead zone quite yet. Yeah. I'm going to say it starts, boy, you get into the mid-40s. I think that's where it starts. So that's why I started with those guys kind of early to mid-30s.

I'm okay with them. Christian Watson at 40. Once you get into the ADP of 42, 43, now you're at Big Mike, DeAndre Hopkins, Jerry Judy, DJ Moore on a new team, Keenan Allen's a thousand years old. I think maybe now is when maybe we start talking. and, you know, do I want to maybe take a quarterback here? Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert are in that range. You know, Georgie Kittal, T.J. Hawkinson are in that range.

So maybe to me that I can, I'm okay with looking somewhere else besides wide receiver at that point. Yeah, so I want to back this up and I want to take it to the extreme. Can you make an argument that the wide receiver dead zone starts at the beginning of round three with wide receiver 13 Devante Smith? And the only reason I mention that is because now you're getting into the area where you might be taking a team's wide receiver two as your wide receiver one. Because Devonte Smith and T. Higgins are going back to back.

Now, I do not think it starts there because as I've detailed earlier, look at the top 15 wide receivers from last year in fantasy points. again all the way, even taking into the top 20. And look at how many of those guys were two guys from the same team. We're talking Smith and Brown, Higgins and Chase, Godwin and Evans, who are absolutely dead zone wide receivers this year for obvious reasons. Lockett and Metcalf. But I wonder, are you okay taking Devonte Smith and T. Higgins as your wide receiver won?

As your one. Boy, oh, boy. I think Devonte Smith takes a step back with a healthy Dallas Goddard. because if you remember Dallas got it was like tight end three or four until he got hurt. He was really having a great season. And then Devante Smith emerged in those weeks once he went down. I'm okay with T. Higgins, I guess is my wide receiver one. But man, you better have some really, really good running backs.

I mean, you better be, you know, maybe you took CMC and then who knows, maybe Barkley fell to you. And you're like, okay, I can't pass that up. Pass that up, yeah. I'm not going to call that the dead zone. But like you can start to see. I think sometimes your brain just acts like, oh, my God, DeVonte Smith isn't even the one on his own team. Now there were points last year where he was. But I'm not calling that the dead zone.

But I think you can back it up and say there's the argument to be made that that is kind of a dead zone. Then you get to D.K. Metcalf who's next an ADP. And the Seahawks passing offense is going to be fascinating this year. because not only did they draft a wide receiver in the first round in Jackson Smith and Jigba, who's going to be their three and probably their long-term replacement for Tyler Lockett, but Drake, they also drafted a running back in the second round for the second consecutive season. So what's their offense going to look like? You know, they can't feed all these people.

If you go back, guys, and you should on our Fantasy Points podcast feed, listen to the NFC Town Hall where all of the content contributors with Fantasy points got together, and they listened to guys like Mr. C, Adam Kaplan, and Brett Whitefield. And Kaplan talked about Seattle. And it was a really good conversation where a few of you guys, Graham Barfield and yourself got involved saying like, listen, this team, you know, they threw the ball. They're very efficient. But Kaplan was pounding on the table. They don't want to throw the football.

They want to run, run, run. And that's why they took another running back because they never want to be in a situation where they can't run the football again. Well, but the counter argument to that is simple. They also took a wide receiver, and they took the wide receiver earlier, and they resigned Gino Smith to $100 million contract. So you have to throw the football in the NFL. You can't play this 1950s, hide the quarterback. We're going to run it 40 times. At the end of the day, it doesn't work because if you start falling behind, you know, you've got to throw the ball.

You know, I get an ideal world. These coaches go, oh, you know, we want to grind, grind, grind, but you got to throw the ball to win. There's one more player before the three that you mentioned in ADP, that being Calvin Ridley, Amory Cooper and Christian Watson. who is going in the third round. And he's a really polarizing pick. Last year, there were points where he was a first round pick. His name is Debo Samuel. And, you know, with the exception of the games,

two years ago, when he was just kind of busting off long touchdown runs every week, he hasn't really produced like a wide receiver one. and now he's getting drafted in the third round. Again, a guy who I think I'm probably okay with is my two, but if I draft him as my one, I'm a little bit nervous with that. And then that brings us to, I think this is the line of demarcation. This is it, if you, how you depends on how you feel about Calvin early, Amari Cooper and Christian Watson.

Now, Drake, I'm okay drafting all three of these guys. Cooper was one of my favorite wide receivers last year, but he was three rounds cheaper. Mm-hmm. It was, yeah, insane value. You grabbed him. You got a wide receiver one, wide receiver two for a wide receiver four value. Right now, Amory Cooper at an ADP of 36 is, there is a lot of heavy lifting here, presuming Deshawn Watson's going to improve. And now I think thinking Deshawn Watson's going to improve this year is a reasonable expectation. Sure. But he was not good last year.

having not played football for two years. Yeah. I mean on Watson and his Browns offense. I think they're going to improve. I think Watson can return to those top five quarterback days. But remember, again, a lot of that time in Houston, it was just like the Wild West, no pun intended, of just him running around,

playgrounding it, throwing up bombs and, you know, in scramble mode, and they're coming back in games. So, you know, do they, want to just pound it with Nick Chubb? Or do they say Nick Chubbs are horse and we're going to ride him, but we don't have much behind him with just Jerome Ford. So we're paying him all this money, him being Deshawn Watson. Let's use these weapons out of him. Let's let the guy cook. And they drafted Elijah. They traded for Elijah Moore. They drafted Cedrick Tillman. But I'm okay with with Cooper here. Mm-hmm. Christian Watson, especially in best ball. I'm totally fine

with the wide receiver 19 price tag. Like maybe he has a couple blow-up games. Remember, in that little, everybody points to that pocket that Jordan Love played against the Eagles in that prime time game where the Eagles knocked Rogers out of the game. Love was great and Watson scored with him.

So, hey, there's that small sample. The guy I'm really interested to talk about is Calvin Ridley. And I want to pull this into a discussion about what you said, you believe is the start of the dead zone. And it starts to you, and I think I kind of agree with this, Mike Williams at wide receiver 20.

Now, it's easy to make an argument for Mike Williams. Well, he's playing with Justin Herbert. He's had huge games in the past. There was the stretch, I believe, two years ago, where before he got hurt, it looked like he was going to be the league winner of league winners, but then the injuries creep up with Mike Williams, and they always do. So he's wide receiver 20.

DeAndre Hopkins is wide receiver 21. We don't even know what team he's going to be on. The Cardinals have kept him out of all of their promotional stuff this offseason. He's going on radio shows talking about what NFL quarterbacks he wants to play with. Hey, it's the good ones, Drake. It's like, well, I'd like to play with Josh Allen and Patrick Holmes and Jalen Hurts. Oh, yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's like what I said.

Hmm, who do I want to do a podcast with next? I didn't say, you know, some guy doing his first podcast in his base. No, you want to do it with the best in the business. That's how you want to propel your career. And that's, of course, why I'm here with you, Joe. So, yeah, I'm with you on that. And I don't think people are equating enough of this trade scenario that's probably going to play out with D'Andre Hopkins.

And where he lands, not only is going to impact him, but whoever else he goes to, I mean, nobody can take that contract, though, in realistically. Like, they either Arizona has to eat some of that contract or just they're going to outright release them. Arizona's in the position. I don't know what their cap situation is. I think Monty Austin Ford, the GM there, he's in the position where you eat the contract. You're in a rebuild mode, man. Like, if you, you are absolutely in a position where you pay money to get better assets.

That's what Sashi Brown used to do back in the day with the Browns. Like, remember when he ate the Browns? Rock Osweiler contract. Absolutely. Which was a great move on his part. So Hopkins can go either way. He could go somewhere where he goes to the bills and you're like, whoa, you know, he could score 10 touchdowns or could it be a Julio Jones situation where he goes to

the Titans and does absolutely nothing. And then it gets really interesting. Jerry Judy's wider receiver 22. And I will fully admit sitting here, Drake, I have drafted a lot of Jerry Judy so far. but you want to talk about wishcasting. All right. I know all the numbers. Like fantasy points data suggests Jerry Judy is one of the best peer separators in the NFL.

But this is somebody who's played never full season, by the way. He's played, well, he did two years ago as a rookie. He's played 41 games in his career, scored nine touchdowns. Yeah, actually, to be honest, his numbers better last year than I thought they were. 9-72-6. He scored three touchdowns in one game in week 14. Yeah, that'll do it. But you got to really hope for a Russell Wilson bounce back here.

Sean Payton comes in here and does his magic. And there's a lot of wishcasting there. Next is DJ Moore. What do you think of him? Because this is somebody who we know is a big-time talent. But for DJ Moore to pay off. his wide receiver 2380P at 46 overall. Justin Fields needs to take a Jalen Hertz like Leap as passer.

Yeah, I'm in on DJ Mortis because I think he's really good. And we know that, you know, his time at Maryland, he was a really electric wide receiver entered the league. He's just never had that quarterback play. I think much more highly of Justin Fields maybe than other people do. I liked him in college. I thought he was a solid prospect. It's weird with Justin Fields.

Like with the, you know, on draft day, everyone's like, how isn't everyone letting this guy slide? And then he gets into the league and everyone's like, he stinks, he can't play. And now this year it's like, wait a minute, why is everyone overlooking Justin Fields? But when we're talking about DJ Moore, it's a guy who can win at any level of the field. He can, you know, he can run the short routes. He can beat you deep. He can be a possession guy. But with the amount that we think they're going to throw the ball there, which might not be a ton,

and the added weapons of. of, you know, they still have Darnel Mooney. They added Chase Claypool last year. You know, is he going to see wide receiver one type of volume? Would you rather have him or a team that's going to throw the ball probably 150 more times than he'll see? So I'm sitting there where DJ Moore is coming off the board and, you know, T.J. Hawkinson's there. And maybe Jemier Gibbs falls a little bit. Kenneth Walker's there.

If there was an interesting guy, maybe you take one of those. Maybe you take one of those running backs there. Maybe you take the tight end. You could also maybe take a quarterback. You could take Joe Burroughs going in that range. Maybe you drafted Jamar Chase early. So yeah, he's a guy I haven't been drafting a whole lot of. I'll tell you one guy, though, who's next in the ADP in this kind of presumed dead zone,

who I have seen so many differing opinions on. And that's Keenan Allen. And especially on Underdog. which is half PPR. I can't get there. But Scott Barrett astutely reminded me before last year when his season was completely derailed by the hamstring. And by the way, Keenan Allen did average 6.6 catches and 75.2 yards per game last year,

which are still elite numbers. 13 points a game and a half PPR. Before that, he had basically a five-season run where he averaged over 100 catches per season, about 1,200 yards per season, and about six touchdowns per season. Now he's going into his age 31 season, and he's coming off a year in which he had a severe handicap with the hamstring injury. And I haven't been able to get there, and I'm just wondering if I'm being stupid. Look, they drafted a receiver in the first round, though.

Now, we presume, we think Justin Herbert's one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. are we are we overthinking this with keen keen allen is the question i have that's a good great way to frame it because you could look back in October November you know you're like man why is my team struggling and you look up and down your league standings and the guy in first place you're like guys got keen and allen he drafted him as his wide receiver three the guys putting up great numbers round you know yeah keen and Allen last year i i referenced the 13.1 points per game on average and a half point ppr that's aided by a Week 18, 26 burger.

So what you're getting most of the weeks out of Kenan Allen in a half PPR, which is underdog, I can tell you what did last year at Weeks 11 on, 9.9, 13.4, 17, 15, 12, 15, 9, and then that big 26. So outside of Week 18, is he winning you a lot of weeks? No, but he's really, really solid. And I think sometimes, like we mentioned before, the boring guys last year at running back like Miles Sanders, sometimes those guys, if they, they stay healthy and we can't predict injury,

sometimes those guys just produce and they win. Anytime you got Keenan Allen on a team and he's healthy, he's always producing for you. So I'm with you. I do think we're putting a little too much in, oh, Keenan Allen's washed up. I don't know about that. I think I'd still take another run on him at that ADP.

Yeah, and the question now becomes, would I rather have Keenan Allen or DJ more, a younger, more talented player who's in a much more precarious situation? And maybe I'd rather have Allen. And I should probably start dabbling there because when you do as many drafts on Underdog as we do, right? I just mass-entered like the poodle this morning, the $7 contest. We'll have a little information on how you can get into that, by the way. I just mass-entered that.

And one of the things that I have to keep in mind, Drake, is we don't have all the answers. Right. And there are certainly, like, for instance, you're going to take Amon Ross St. Brown over D'Andre Hopkins 10 times out of 10 if you have that choice. But that's not necessarily a choice that you're going to have in many fantasy drafts, right? It's not going to be that binary choice. The question is going to be, would you rather have D'Andre Hopkins or Keenan Allen? And if I have to make that call, I think you have to understand, oh, I have my preference. I actually prefer Keenan Allen there.

But we have to be smart enough to know we're not smart enough to make a 10 times out of 10 decision on that, right? We have to say, all right, I prefer Keenan Allen, but is it 6040? Is it 70, 30? Because in that range, it's not 100 zero. And so you have to diversify a little bit when you're doing as many drafts as we do. Now, that might not help you. If you're somebody who's listening to this show and is like, hey guys, I don't know why you'd be listening to this show in May, but hey, good for you.

All I'm listening for is I want to kick the asses of my buddies who we, in our $100 league we draft on Labor Day weekend. Yep. You know, so you might not have that choice, but I do have to get better at saying, ooh, my natural reaction has been, let's fade Keenan Allen. I don't like the ADP. But is it so bad that I should be fading him 100% of the time, and I'm not sure that's the case. And sometimes we in this fantasy expert quote unquote community get lost in the sauce.

And that guy who you just referenced drafted on Labor Day weekend gets it right. And he wins his league. He goes, I could do these shows. You know why? Because I just pick the best player. I look at the name. I go, wait, DeAndre Hopkins. Keenan, they're good. I'm going to draft him on my team. I'm not going to get cute and try to get, you know, some guy five runs later who's going to break out. No, just give me the damn best player right now. I know DeAndre good, especially if we know he's going to go to a new team. But at some point, too, Joe, what if he doesn't go to a new team? And it's just D'Andre Hopkins and some point later in the season, we don't know when,

but Kyler Murray comes back. And he's just fed targets all day long because they don't have jack shit else in Arizona. DeAndre Hopkins could put up monster numbers in the second half of the season. Yeah, and I'm not a Kyler Murray guy, but maybe that's something that I should reevaluate as well. This gets really interesting here because two of my favorite of these dead zone wide receivers are coming up. Are they Drake London and Terry McLaurin? No, I'm not a London guy. I worry about those two guys specifically because they're next in the ADP because they're on teams that don't want to throw the football.

Yeah. Which scares me. Like, wait, why do I want receivers on teams that don't want to throw? So I actually like McLaren. And maybe Drake, you could ask me, hell, why do you? like McLaren and not London. I will ask that, Joe. Why do you like McLaren and not London? I think McLaren has a longer track record. Terry McClure is really good. I mean, there's nothing, the only thing that going against him is he plays for the worst franchise in sports and he has no

quarterback. Yeah. Well, can I push back on that a little bit? Please do. Let's just say Sam Hal stinks. They're going to give them and Ron Rivera and the commanders are doing the right thing. They're going to give Sam Hal the opportunity to prove he stinks. Yeah. And by the way, that's the right thing. They should be doing that. If Sam Hal does stink, their backup's Jacoby Percette. I think Jacoby Brousset's pretty good. He can matriculate the ball down the field. My question is, and again, I'll go back to the NFC Town Hall and the insider information that Kaplan was giving out saying how much the commanders don't want to throw the football. They want to ground and pound.

You saw with Chris Rodriguez, another bruising back that they drafted. And they got, we want to pound the rock. I mean, if I'm hearing this over and over, these teams don't want to throw the football. Like, maybe I'll look elsewhere to a team that does. If I got to make a choice of this guy or this guy, because it's not like I have to have Terry McLaren on my team. It's not going to make or break my squad. I just think McClorin's a really good player.

and I think the I think the parachute is a little bit in better condition with Washington than it is with Atlanta. Desmond Ritter played like, yeah, and look, Desmond Ritter actually has a longer track record in the NFL than Sam Howell does. But behind Desmond Ritter is old hospital ball Heineke, H.B. Heineke, who Washington just chose to let go to sign Jacoby Brissette. And I will say this about all HB. He throws the ball to his players. He got Terry McLaurin and a half PPR finished last year at wide receiver 14. So, you know, if he got there on not very many big weeks. Maybe I should be viewing Drake London in the same way that I view Terry McLaren, right?

Like hospital ball Heineke got him production. So maybe he can get Drake London production. I don't know. It's really interesting. It's kind of funny how my brain's gravitating towards McLaren in that when you can really make an argument during similar situations. And I think here's part of the reason why. We're not talking tight ends on this show,

but Graham Barfield's got an article coming this week at FantasyPoints.com. I'm actually in on Kyle Pitts this year, Drake. Are you? I love the talent on Pitts and London. I'm out on, well, the quarterback obviously, I'm on the play caller. I don't think Arthur Smith's good. You're not an Artie Smith guy.

No, I mean, I don't think he, he doesn't know how to utilize his best weapons. And that is the mark of a good coach. You don't have to be a great coach. Just a good coach. Like if you're in high school and you got an elite running back, you guess what we're going to do, kids, turn around and hand him the ball.

They're going to do that this year. They are going to do that this year, which worries me about the receivers. Well, right. And then there's another argument from McLaren, right? Yes, the commanders are going to run the ball, but they don't have Bijon Robinson. They have Brian Rob, I like Brian Robinson.

I kind of like Robinson and Gibson where they're going. But I kind of like the competition a little less in Washington. And that brings me to probably my favorite of the wide receivers. We're going to go down a few more. Christian Kirk at Wide Receiver 27. I like where this is going. Now, Drake, we all panned the Christian Kirk signing last year. And I do wonder, because we all kind of had that visceral negative reaction to the Christian Kirk signing last year, and let him fall to wide receiver 33 or wherever he was going last year, should we really be letting him fall to wide receiver 27?

And that, and that then becomes something else entirely. He was wide receiver 18 last year and half PPR fantasy points per game. Should he be going two rounds after Calvin Ridley, who hasn't played football in over a year and we haven't seen, have a thousand-yard season with Trevor Lawrence, which Christian Kirk had? Christian Kirk had 84 catches for 1,108 yards and eight touchdowns last year. And now he's going basically 10 wide receivers after his new teammate,

who I think many would have, before last year, it wasn't even close. Everybody would argue Calvin Ridley's better than Christian Kirk. But should it be this big a difference? I'm really not sure. Kirk is my favorite wide receiver to draft in this range. And you can stack them with Lawrence pretty easily. Very easily.

And if you look at what they're doing in Jacksonville, it's all the things that point in the right direction. It's a good quarterback. It's an offensive-minded coach. It's young ascending talent. We're all about that. Christian Kirk is going to be in a role now, I believe, that is more suited to who he really is. He doesn't need to be the elf on the team. That can be Calvin Ridley.

He can play the X on the outside. Now he's going to play a lot more inside. He's going to get secondary defensive looks. The end of last year, if you look at the game logs for Christian Kirk, he was brutal down the stretch because teams knew they go, this is their offense. You know who picked up the slack? Guys like Zay Jones, guys like Evan Ingram. So if Christian Kirk can have the year that Zay Jones had last year,

oh, by the way, Zay Jones caught 82 balls for 823. and five. We pan that signing, too. We pan that signing too. So I, I did Christian Kirk here, I mean, down the stretch. I mean, if you remember last year in the fantasy playoffs, I mean, it was awful. He went back to back subpar three point games in the semifinal and the championship. So people are going to have a bad taste in their mouth about Christian Kirk. Yeah, I just still like the ADP here. And like, who's to say this offense doesn't take a step forward? No question. Trevor Lawrence, his rookie season was completely lost. And then last year he started to look like a pretty damn good football player

because he had an actual football coach in Doug Peterson. So I think Jacksonville might be one of those too many malice to feed situations. But we just had that discussion about the commanders and the Falcons. And those teams have way worse quarterbacks than the Jaguars do. Yeah, I mean, Trevor Lawrence is being drafted as a top seven quarterback in fantasy football. You should be. You know, so folks, maybe you've got Miles defeated home. You need a little extra cash to buy those groceries.

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My wife beats me up all the time. She's like, just get a reusable container. You're killing the environment. The water's not even good in these bottles. It's like sewer water. Like, I don't care. I love it. I never drank water as a kid.

Do you have a fridge that filters water? Yes. What the hell is wrong with you? Dude, it's some weird OCD thing. Do you like cold water? Do you like it cold when you drink it? I know there's sickos like my wife who like room temperature water. This water's been down in the basement for by three days and I'll sip on it.

But no, I do like the cold water. I have a weird thing where I think the bottled water is cleaner and more pure than that hose going up through my basement, through my fridge and into the cup. Yeah, as long as you change the filter, you're out of your mind. You're out of your door. And by the way, speak out of your gourd. I don't know what the hell to do with Chris Godwin at wide receiver 29. I think I'd probably rather have Evans at wide receiver 32 just on the case that Evans is traded.

I don't know why the Buccaneers haven't traded him yet. Well, let's say that happens. And Chris Godwin is the only game in town now for Baker Mayfield or Kyle Trask or a contest winner that gets to play in the second half. So Chris Godwin could see a boatload of targets for a team that acted like they're still in it when we know they're not the way they address their offseason. So Chris Godwin could be one of those sneaky players that nobody wants to draft that just gets a shitload of garbage time targets. That's entirely possible as well. I skipped over Michael Pittman. Wide receiver 28.

I can see it both ways. Anthony Richardson's going to start early. We already know that. There's no way Jim Mersey is letting Gardner Minsh who play 10 games. Or three. Is that a good thing or a bad thing for Michael Pittman? who has produced okay numbers with, I mean, last year was terrible quarterback play. He was wide receiver 29.

That's kind of just where he's getting drafted, by the way. So even if his season is the same as last year when he had close to league worst quarterback play, he's getting drafted at his ADP. Are Gardner Minshu and Anthony Richardson going to be an upgrade over the mummy of Matt Ryan? I would say that's probably a pretty good bet. Michael Pittman had eight games last year under 10 half PPR points. I mean, that's, that's tough to swallow. But he's a big body.

He could be somebody that Richardson clicks with, looks too in the red zone. And just if he just locks on, again, we're saying, hey, this kid is a limited passer, needs to learn how to read defenses. Maybe they simplify it for him. And they go, hey, kid, you got this big, I don't know, how tall is Michael Pittman, 6, 4, 6, 5? You get this big alpha on the outside play next for you. How about you just throw to football at him instead of, we're not going to have you progressing through five different reads and finding, you know, the whatever eighth tight end that they're trotting out, Jolani Woods this week.

I think Michael Pittman could see a bolt lower targets as just the safety blanket for Anthony Richardson. Yeah, I think, I think maybe he's being a little bit underdrafted here. I understand the argument against him, though. just like, we've drafted him highly the last couple years and we've seen the flashes, but it's really been only flashes. And the question becomes how much of that is actually his fault. It's kind of funny that like the Colts did everything they could to move on from Carson Wentz and maybe justifiably so. And Wentz was like twice as good as the quarterback play they got last year. I mean, it was. I mean, Pittman had 1100 yards with Carson Wentz at quarterback.

Everybody on Twitter is talking about Jackson Smith and Jigba. Every expert loves them. He's going to take over. I think someone even on the fantasy points NFC town hall said he is going to take on and be the two. I don't see that at all. I love the guy. I think he's very, very talented. This year, I don't see it.

I don't know if I can click him over Trevor Lawrence, Kyle Pitts. I can't do it over Tyler Lockett. His ADP is above Tyler Lockett. I'm not doing it. Yeah. He's wide receiver 30. Lockett's wide receiver 33. As a matter of fact, if you are forcing me in the sixth round to draft a rookie wide receiver, I'd probably rather have Jordan Addison, who's going wide receiver 34.

I just think there's a much bigger window for Addison to come in and instantaneously make an impact. And the thing I love about Minnesota, I guess I coined this term on the fantasy feast with Ross Tucker, they're a narrow fantasy team. It's not going to be like Sean Payton. you know, finding whatever UDFA he has on his practice squad and drawing up a play for him that week. Minnesota and Kurt Cousins, Kirk Cousins has, say what you want about Kirk. He throws to his good players. He throws it to Justin Jefferson.

He throws it to T.J. Hawkinson. He threw it to Adam Feelein and he handed the ball to Dalvin Cook. I know there's going to be changes there this year because we expect Dalvin Cook to be moved on from. And we expect, and obviously, feeling's gone. but everything about Jordan Addison suggests this is a plug-in-play guy. He won't be as good right away as Adam Thielen in his prime, but I think he could be as good right away as Adam Thielen last year. I love Jordan Addison.

If I'm a guy in a home league, trust me, I think he's going way down the board. His best ball 10 ADP is 90. So you're looking at 67 on underdog and, you know, the draft kings, if you do their basketball, 71, I mean, 90 FFPCs, he's 87. So there's a discount to be had depending on where you're driving. Again, you talk about how drunk wide receiver is at underdog. This proves the point right there, how pushed up the board Jordan Addison is.

So I love that. I'd love to get him on the team. You know, we skipped over guys like Brandon Ayuk, Mike Evans, Tyler Rockins. Brandon Ayuk is a permanent resident of the wide receiver dead zone. The mail gets forward. there, right? Yeah, like, I mean, I just don't know what to do with. We know he's talented, but he can end up in the doghouse any given week. We don't know who's playing quarterback for the 49ers. We presume it's Brock Purdy. But what's Brock Purdy's track record? I mean,

maybe he's just a prototypical Shanahan quarterback, but what is his track record? I mean, it's just, he's like, God, I got him in a, I'm doing this like best ball for our buddy, Jim Coventry and Roto Wire. And it's, you know, I'm best. best ball tens. And I'm just kind of scrolling. It's like the 15th round. And I only have two quarterbacks at the time. Like, I better grab a third.

Let me see who's there. Brock Purdy was still there. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, whoa, okay, boot, click. Didn't he have a stretch? He was just throwing multiple touchdowns. Like every single week, he has great weapons, insane scheme. So not to make this a purdy conversation.

But, yeah, Brandon Ayyuk is a guy also who probably is not going to be on this roster next year because he's got a big number coming. up. So do they maybe phase him out? Do they trade him? Do they, you know, I don't know. And there were some trade rumors around him. I understand where he's going where he is because it's good offense. Yeah, no question about it. There's guys in this same dead zone though, Cadarius Tony, who's a number one on his own team, we think is a number one on his own team. Like, why would you just take Cadarious Tony there? I'm wondering if the dead zone kind of expires. Because if we're if we're going to if we're going to say it's a zone that that indicates there's a beginning in the end.

True. Because then you start getting into, no, I'm not drafting Cadarius Tony in the fourth round. But once you get to his sixth, seventh round ADP, I'm drafting a lot of Cadarious Tony. In the event, he is the one there. You know, say what you want about Deontay Johnson. He caught over 100 passes last year. Of course, none of them were in the end zone. None of them more than three yards down the field.

Yeah, but I mean, he still caught 100 passes. George Pickens has talent. I actually really like Marquise Brown at wide receiver 39. He might be their number one receiver all year. Sure. Like if they trade DeAndre Hopkins. And then you get into Gabe Davis, who has an incredibly palatable wide receiver 4080P. And I know they drafted Dalton Kincaid, but in theory, they didn't upgrade on Gabe Davis's outside wide receiver position this year.

So I think that dead zone kind of expires after Iyuk, after Mike Edmonds and Lockett. Like, I think you can even make an argument it expires with Lockett because you said right there, you would rather have Lockett than Smith and Jigba. And Smith and Jigba is going three wide receiver spots ahead of Tyler Lockett. So is that kind of that expiration once you get to that sixth round? I think that four through the sixth is really what we're going to define as the wide receiver dead zone. Yeah, that's a great way to put it as, you know, what we've talked about today.

Because you're right. Yeah, I like, I do like Dallas Godd Arthur, Kyle Pitts at 63, but I start to really turn and look at these guys like Tony and, you know, Hollywood Brown. I kind of want these guys on my team. I'm not like holding my nose and just scrolling past them. So I, I dig that, Joe. I dig that. If you guys are looking for not just one place to play, you, to spread your money out like you do on a lot of books. You don't just have all your money at

Caesars. You got it on Fanduel. You got it on DK. Why don't you go try our friends over at the FFPC because they're drafting all of their tournaments right now except for the main event. That's their big, big, big one. Trust me, we're going to talk about that later in the year. That kicks off July 4th weekend. But they've got two tournaments this year, Joe, with a million dollar grand prizes. We got to get in some of these. We got the main event and the fantasy pros championship. If I take that down, Drake, see you on the other side, we're retiring from this pot. No, I will keep doing the pod because I enjoy doing the pod.

Maybe Dynasty is your thing, right? They got Dynasty startups filling every single day. There's orphans over there. Remember Joe and I picked up an orphan team. Go back in the archives and listen to that, starting at $100. And it goes all the way. Maybe you're a baller. You got a $5,000 entry on a Dynasty League team.

You can do it at the FFPC. Bestball tournaments, $125. Superflex best ball. For the cheap skates like me, $35. They're all live. over at the FFPC. Check it out. Go to myfPC.com for more information. Love the guys over there at the FFPC. So talking dead zone running backs here. Hopefully you guys are watching this on YouTube. Make sure you subscribe to that YouTube channel. There's so much great content here.

I just watched earlier this morning, Joe, a best ball breakdown with Scott Barrett, Chris Weck, Tommy Tipple. They had the kid who won the first ever. Liam Ruff. So really fun. I did a show with John Hanson. Ask Guru anything. You can come on and listen to that or you can just ask any off-the-wall question you want to the gurus.

Get over to that YouTube.com slash fantasy points. Click subscribe. Trust me, it helps us out a lot. And there's just kick-ass content. So anything else here with this dead zone you want to touch on. The question is that people are listening to this. Pick your favorite. Let's just say, let's say it starts.

with Mike Williams at wide receiver 20. And it ends with Tyler Lockett at wide receiver 33 or ends with Mike Evans at wide receiver 32 since you said you really like Lockett. Yeah. Who is your favorite and least favorite wide receivers to draft at ADP in this range? Oh, boy. Let me say. You know why I really dig? I would take Chris Godwin over Jerry Judy every day.

the week. I think he's just more talented. Baker Mayfield, say what you want about him, is going to get the ball out to these players. They have to. They just have, what else are they going to do? The offense is pretty limited. So I think my favorite pick of all of these guys is going to be Chris Godwin. That sounds crazy because he's got a terrible quarterback and the team's going to stink, but he's just so good and he's going to eat those underneath routes because it's Godwin, it's Evans for now. And who else? He's going to get 15 targets a game.

Who's your least favorite of this group? Oh, boy. I'm going to say my least favorite. I'm not a huge Judy guy, but he could surprise. I mean, I did a segment last year on Sirius XM called Hate the Drake, where I went over the players who crapped the bed that week in fantasy football. the most listed player for 18 weeks was Drake London because he just comes up so small.

He's not a separator. He's a contested catch guy. And who knows, maybe Ritter is going to be apprehensive at trying to force the ball into them. They got this new running game. He's still got pits. I'm going to say my least favorite here is my brother from another mother, Drake London. I'm going to say my favorite is Christian Kirk. I can't go back on that at wide receiver 27. and I think you've convinced me that my least favorite here is Jackson Smith and Jigba at wide receiver 30.

He was my number two here. And he's the third guy in his own offense. I love the player. I think he's a top five, even in Superflex Dynasty kind of asset in rookie drafts. I just don't know about the ADP right now. Three Seahawks going in the top 33 wide receivers. Yeah, come on. I mean, we've got to be smarter than that as a group.

There's no way that all pays off. We don't know which two probably will, but I'm not going to bank on the rookie. We keep betting against Tyler Lockett and every year he shoves it down our throat. I mean, yeah, I, I'm, I'll bet against Tyler Lockett when when Tyler Lockett retires. And even still, I might be like, what if he comes out, you know, like draft him in the 18th round of an underdog draft? No doubt, man. Well, this was fun. Anything else, uh, you got for me, Joe, or put a bow on this two point stance for the day?

I thought we had a good show, Drake. I hope I enjoyed The Ask Guru with John. I hope that's a thing that continues going forward. And it was good talking to you, my friend. I hope you have a great Memorial Day weekend. It's supposed to be a washout down here. Oh, it's going to be nice up here in Syracuse. The shovel's getting put away.

The winter hat goes off, jumping in the pool. And then, you know, we're back getting ready for Christmas. But yeah, it should be nice here in Syracuse. Hope everybody out there listening. Be safe this Memorial Day. Don't drink and drive. And enjoy some best ball drafts. with code fantasy PTS.

This has been the two points. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite platform. And come join the roster at FantasyPoints.com.